Sams Teach Yourself Ruby in 21 Days

Strings

A string holds characters and nothing else. It is Ruby's only single-purpose container.

As the name suggests, a string has a beginning and an end; it is an ordered container. It might just as accurately have been called a “chain.” If the organizing principle were a “bag” instead, then the characters could be scrambled; we would be able to distinguish list from still, but not fare from fear.

Two strings are considered equal only if they have the exact same characters in the exact same sequence.

"fare" == "fear"      #–> false
"Night" == "night"    #–> false
"nine " == " nine "   #–> false
"rabbit" == "rabbit"  #–> true

Specifying Substrings by Position

Each position in a string has a numerical index. In good computer science tradition, Ruby's indices ...